New Gods of Mankind puts the players in the roles of gods of the Known World. Players create god characters by outlining their domains of influence, symbols, miracles, commandments, rituals, worship and more, and begin with a small group of followers. The decisions they make as deities will determine if their influence grows or not. The book is beautifully illustrated, with great detail and attention given to the mortal and celestial realms, and even includes a boardgame 'treatment' of the rules, for those who might want to do away with the roleplaying elements.

I've always been a fan of the old video game Populous, which may be why this RPG and its accompanying boardgame appeals to me as much as it does. While there is a setting included, it wouldn't be difficult to strip it out and use these rules to play the role of gods in the fantasy setting of your choice, making this a very versatile RPG product for a very reasonable price.

This is a fun RPG that can also double as a board game. There is a TON of mythology here, so it'll take some time to get through. It's a pretty quick read though. The book describes the world (bronze age with races other than humans), Celestial Gardens (where gods live), and other planes of existence that are important to the game. Players take the role of new gods who finally accumulated enough followers to ascend to the heavens. Using their Belief, gods can perform Miracles to help their tribes. The overall goal is to have your followers conquer, convert, or otherwise neutralize other tribes to succeed.

The god creation rules are pretty flexible with players picking their primary trait that they influence like Summer or Wind. They choose a secondary trait, personality, description, heavenly kingdom, etc. Miracles are easier to perform (require less belief) if it is congruent with your primary trait.

The actual play is basically rounds of events occurring to the gods' tribes. The gods then react with Miracles or by influencing the world, other gods counter those actions if desired, and the tribes try to expand their influence. Because of the mechanics, the GM can actually play a god as well. Events can be randomly rolled on charts and the world need not be directed by one person. I like the idea of this game being a nice compromise for the routine GM who wants to play without requiring someone to run the game in their place. Good stuff.

- Great concept, playing actual Gods instead of "Gods Walking The Earth"
- Playable as a board game as well as an RPG (or mix and match).
- Plays on common fantasy tropes without hitting the standard dwarf/elf/halfing/etc mix.
- A great deal of usable information in the one corebook.

The Bad:

- Could have used better organization in some places.
- Quick references at the back of the book for all of the charts would have been great.
- Playing as Gods may be a bit too much of a disconnect for some people.

We got this product for review on The Digital Front some time back, but unfortunately Mark's time has been taken up by real life stuff, so it ended up lingering in the electronic closet of gaming books. I had taken a look at it a couple of times since getting the download, and when Richard Leon (of Dark Skull Studios, the publisher) emailed me if I had had a chance to look it over, I took the opportunity to give it one more look and write up some feedback for him, which I now share with you.

Overall I think they have a very intriguing game in New Gods of Mankind. The premise is that you play a new deity as it begins to make its mark on the world and gather followers to create a cult, and thus power. At first I thought that this was along the lines of Godsend Agenda or Scion, but the fact that you actually get to play an actual deity at a period of time when such a paradigm makes sense (the game is set in this world's early bronze age, when the elder races are still strong, but humanity is starting to become a major force in the world's dynamics - in short, the perfect time for the titutlar new gods of manking to be making their power plays in order to raise their protected race, and themselves, up in influence and power) is a lot more compeling. I have a soft spot for ancient/bronze age settings, so they hooked me here, and the world they have described seems very appealing, very Hyborea-like, with all the cool pulp fantasy elements that entails. I think, actually, it's one of the books strongest points.

Playing a deity is not something that calls too me as a gamer, I do have to admit, but I must say that the character creation chapter could very well stand alone as the centerpiece of a great supplement on the creation of deities for a homebrewed campaign. It covers all the right elements to leave you with a well-rounded, complex deity to drop into your world; no cookie-cutter gods here, I assure you. Dark Skull would do well to grab this chapter out and make the supplement I suggest, because it would be of great use to a wide variety of gamers, and would help expose others to their game.

To up the cool factor once more, the book includes a chapter on playing New Gods of Mankind as a board game, effectively giving you two games in one. At $9.95 for the PDF, I think this is a great buy, even if only for the setting and deity creation material in case you're not looking for another game.

Fans of Scion and Godsend Agenda would do well to take a look at New Gods of Mankind. You're already familiar with playing a character at this level of power, and hey, why not play an actual deity instead of an avatar?